Galen Rupp Feels Lucky

Is America's best distance runner's contentment a weakness, or a strength?

Strictly speaking, the Galen Rupp era in U.S. distance running began on a late-summer day in 2000, when Jim Rilatt, the soccer coach at Central Catholic High School in Portland, Ore., watched a skinny, towheaded 14-year-old freshman midfielder, totally untrained as a runner, knock out a series of 200m sprints at under 30 seconds per rep. Rilatt reported the kid's performance to the legendary former marathoner Alberto Salazar, whose son attended Central and who'd just begun coaching the school's cross country team. Salazar stopped by soccer practice to take a look at the speedy freshman. The rest, as they say, is history.

My own connection with Rupp, however, may have begun even earlier. I might have watched him play soccer against my son's youth-league team when both boys were around 12. I recall a stormy autumn Saturday afternoon out at Delta Park, Portland's city soccer complex near the Columbia River. I remember a spitting rain, a chilly wind and a flock of geese outlined against a pewter sky. A fellow soccer dad and I engaged in a familiar sideline debate: whether busy, versatile, balanced, basically well-adjusted kids like our sons could overcome their lack of insecurities to dig deep into a single pursuit--to sacrifice and suffer to the degree necessary, I argued, to reach the top level of a sport.

At that moment, out on the field, a skinny blond kid on our sons' opposing team flew down the right wing to deliver a perfect crossing pass that his striker couldn't quite nail. The dad and I exchanged glances. "That's what I'm talking about," I said. "That kid's got the right tools, but he's probably too distracted by algebra, the French horn and drama club to fully develop them. I bet that in 10 or 15 years he'll be finishing law school and playing co-ed rec soccer twice a week." That skinny blond kid might have been any one of a dozen talented youth soccer players in Portland at the time, one of whom was Rupp.

"Yeah, I guess that's possible," the 25-year-old Rupp says with a grin. He lies on a table deep in the belly of the Lance Armstrong Sports and Fitness Center on the Nike campus in suburban Portland, getting one of his twice-weekly deep-tissue massages. Rupp has recently concluded a mixed-bag 2012 indoor track season in which he set the American record for the 2-mile, but failed to qualify for the finals in the 1500m at the world championships in Istanbul, Turkey.

"I played a lot of soccer games at Delta Park," Rupp continues. "I was a typical Eastside Portland kid. We lived in the Mt. Tabor neighborhood. I went to All Saints K-8 and hung out at Laurelhurst Park. And yeah, I was that kind of well-rounded perfectionist who got straight A's in school and wanted to be good at everything." He goes quiet for a beat. "Soccer was really important to me," he says. "I made varsity at Central as a freshman. I dreamed about playing in college and maybe even beyond college."

For a moment Rupp's eternally open, cheerful, boyish face clouds. I lean in closer to the table, thinking that he might show a rare flash of his dark side--the rage, hunger and fire that must be in there somewhere, driving him over the last dozen years to become the most accomplished native-born male American distance runner of his generation. But the darkness passes faster than a May rain-cloud. Rupp's sunny, default smile returns. "But then, lucky for me, I crossed paths with Alberto," he says.

I look for a hint of irony, a sign that Rupp might regard his luck as the least bit mixed, but don't find one. For the next half hour, as the massage therapist kneads and digs, Rupp expounds on that luck and delineates his seemingly charmed life.
HE FEELS LUCKY TO BE MARRIED."Last September Keara Sammons and I got married and settled here in Portland. Keara ran down at the U of O--she understands the sport. We've been together since sophomore year in college. We have a great time traveling together to meets and out to Utah when I'm training at altitude."

HE FEELS LUCKY TO LIVE THE LIFE OF A PROFESSIONAL ATHLETE."I like the variety and the challenge. Every day, the work is a little bit different. I couldn't stand to be confined to a cubicle. I like moving around. And I'm incredibly fortunate to run for the Oregon Project, to make a good living at what I love to do."

HE FEELS LUCKY TO HAVE EXPERIMENTED WITH THE 1500M."Even though I missed the finals [at the indoor world championships], I'm glad I came down in distance and tried it. I've never been afraid to race and never been afraid to lose. This year is all about improving my closing speed in the 10."

HE FEELS LUCKY TO HAVE RESISTED RUNNING THE MARATHON."Up until a week before the race [the U.S. Olympic marathon trials in January] I was seriously considering it. I really want to do a marathon. But I talked it over with Keara and Alberto, and decided that the timing just wasn't right. I've got business to take care of in the 10. I'm still getting faster on the track, still learning. In the Olympics you can't run the 10/marathon double and do justice to either event. I'm only 25. I've got plenty of time for the marathon."

HE FEELS LUCKY TD BE TRAINING WITH MO FARAH."When Alberto first floated the idea of Mo joining the Oregon Project, I was skeptical. But now I think it's the best thing that could've happened. The fact that we run the same events is a plus, in my opinion. We help each other more than we compete. I never would've gotten my AR in the 10 without Mo pushing me in training, and he might not have gotten that world championship in the 5 without me pushing him. But beyond that, we've become great friends. I feel totally at ease with Mo, like he's one of the guys I ran with at the U of O."

HE FEELS LUCKY TO HAVE SUCH GOOD OLYMPIC PROSPECTS."My 26.48 AR put me at number 16 on the world list. I've proven that I'm in the mix with guys like Bekele. Now it's all about putting together the 54-second last lap I'm going to need to make the medal platform. Finishing fifth or sixth isn't going to satisfy me. We're after something bigger."

HE FEELS LUCKY TO BE LIVING IN HIS HOMETOWN."The more I travel, the more places I see around the world, the more I appreciate Portland. I love it here, and I couldn't imagine living anywhere else. I've got a tight circle of family and friends. I'm a pretty simple guy. I like hanging out. I like going to U of O football games."
Listening to all this, I'm a little disappointed -- not that Rupp feels so lucky, but that I've failed to pierce his veil of equanimity. For more than a decade, journalists have been trying to get inside Rupp's head, to locate the fire, and it seems that I'm faring no better than my predecessors. Also like other reporters, I worry that Rupp's niceness might form his flaw; basically, the same soccer-dad theory I put forth on the rainy Delta Park sidelines 15 years ago. Indeed, Rupp's own coach once embodied the efficacy of single-minded athletic obsession. No American distance runner since Salazar has displayed a similar competitive rage; no runner since has proved as successful.

But as Rupp continues to wax contentedly -- "... it's so cool the way things have fallen together for me, to be supported by Nike and exposed to all the great stuff around campus ..." -- and as he relaxes into the searing but healing pain emanating from the therapist's fingers, I wonder if I'm looking at him the wrong way. What if Rupp's solid, grounded, balanced personality in fact forms the foundation of his success?

When they're not training or racing, elite Kenyan and Ethiopian distance runners tend to sit still. They pay attention to matters under their control and leave the rest to their coaches, agents and fate. Rupp projects a similar vibe, a deceptively simple talent for minimizing friction, anxiety and doubt -- for channeling all his energy, intellect and will into running 25 laps around a 400m track.

Salazar, the man who knows the runner the best, agrees with this latter theory -- up to a point. I spoke with Salazar last January, at the start of the Olympic year, at his house in Portland's West Hills. "On the surface Galen has had a smooth, lucky ride, but scratch beneath it and you see that he's had to battle at every stage of his career," he said. "He's had everything thrown at him, beginning in high school. As soon as I started working with Galen the spotlight was on him. Every move he made got dissected and cross-examined, and a lot of controversy and negative stuff got directed at him."

For the next half hour, Salazar pointed out Rupp's difficulties in the matters that, three months later during our interview at Nike, Rupp would count as his blessings. "After high school he had to deal with the controversy about his decision not to go to college right away," Salazar said. "He took a different path and everybody said he'd sink. But he didn't sink. Then came the University of Oregon controversy, his arrangement to keep working with me while competing for the school. People said that would be a problem. It would create jealousy and divisiveness that would undermine the coach's authority and threaten the U of O program. Instead, the program was reborn and Galen had a terrific college experience.

"Then he turns pro and takes his lumps at first and people say he's not getting any better, he's in over his head, he lacks world-class speed, doesn't have a winner's mentality, all the rest. Galen just kept getting faster, incrementally, sustainably, year after year, without getting hurt. Then Chris Solinsky comes along and sets his sub-27-minute 10,000 AR. Galen just takes his time, does what he does, and runs 26.48. Then comes the marathon trials controversy and the asthma controversy. There's that message-board drumbeat that I'm pulling his strings and controlling his mind and who knows what else ... vile, terrible, fantasy stuff. But you know what? It's only made Galen incredibly strong. He's more tough-minded than any athlete I've ever known."

Back at the massage table at the Lance Armstrong Center, I mention Salazar's comments to Rupp. "Don't you grow weary of the knocks and the gossip?" I ask him. After 10 years, aren't you tired of hearing that you still haven't won the big one, or that you're Salazar's creation? Rupp bats away the questions with another grin. "Naw, I don't read any of that chat room stuff," he says. "Those guys don't know what they're talking about. They don't see what I do, how hard I train, what I think about. I have a pretty tight circle of friends and family, and as long as I'm solid with them, then I know I'm on the right track. That's all that matters."

At the heart of Rupp's circle, of course, stands Salazar. The partnership that started on that summer day in 2000 endures, which is in itself a major achievement. Think of all the coaches and wannabe coaches over the last 15 years who have discovered a talented teenage athlete and predicted greatness. All the college basketball coaches visiting New York City playgrounds, all the major league baseball scouts on the Dominican Republic diamonds, all the football coaches in Texas high school stadiums. Think about all the missed signals, unfortunate choices, bad breaks, arguments about money and career-ending ACL tears. Think, in short, of the odds against these partnerships panning out in any sport.

"When I met Alberto I was a 14-year-old kid," he says. "Now I'm a 25-year-old married man. At first -- in fact, for a long time -- he seemed infallible. I never questioned anything he told me. Over time, of course, I realized that he was human like anybody else. Now we really understand each other. We have seen each other in just about every extreme, from the lowest to the highest. I was even there that day in 2007 when he nearly died from his heart attack. We care a lot about each other. Our relationship isn't as one-way as it was earlier. We'll have occasional disagreements where we'll holler at each other, but those blow over fast. In the end, I really trust Alberto. In terms of running, I have more faith in him than I have in myself."

A year ago, in March 2011, I visited an Oregon Project workout at the Duniway Track near downtown Portland. Rupp had just returned from a triumphant road race debut at the New York City Half Marathon, where he'd finished third in 60.30. A mid-race spill had left him with a nasty road rash, but not even that could blunt his exuberance. He pranced warm-up laps in the rain like a young colt, joking with Kara Goucher, who was about to run her second Boston Marathon.

Most of Salazar's attention was focused on Goucher, but he still made time for Rupp. Salazar thought he'd detected a hitch in Rupp's arm swing, and the runner paid rapt attention to his coach as he diagnosed the problem and brain-stormed solutions. But the next moment they were gossiping about the U of O track program and guffawing like fraternity brothers. In both instances their mutual regard shone through, as did their unending fascination with the craft of distance running.

But the fascination by itself isn't enough. Over the last 12 years, under Salazar's guidance, Rupp has amassed a body of work that, even if he never raced again, would put him among the very top all-time rank of American distance runners. And yet, also due in part to Salazar's guidance, the public still awaits Rupp's signature, transcendent performance. That pact was struck on that day in 2000 when Salazar foresaw greatness in the 14-year-old soccer player. The expectations grow with each passing year, as, against the odds, Rupp patiently continues to fulfill his destiny.

As I watched the two men work, I thought about all the places I'd witnessed Rupp run over the years, from his high school conference cross country championships to the U.S. Olympic trials; from an interval workout on Bo Jackson Field at the Nike campus to the world track and field championships in Osaka. Then I recalled that distant rainy afternoon on the Delta Park soccer field, and debating the question of whether a thoughtful, considerate, balanced, well-adjusted American kid could overcome his lack of insecurities to attain the height of his calling. The answer now, like the answer then, runs right in front of me.
THE GALEN RUPP ERA

2000Rupp meets Salazar.

2004MAY - Graduates from Central High School.JUNE - Sets American high school record for 3,000m in 8:03.67.JULY - Sets American high school record for 5,000m in 13:37.91.

2005FEBRUARY - Wins U.S. junior cross country national title and leads U.S. team in world junior cross country championship (20th) in mid-March.MAY - Running for Oregon, sets U.S. junior (age 19 and under) record for 10,000m in 28:25.52.CROSS COUNTRY - Foot injury eliminates most of collegiate season.

2006INDOOR - Fifth in 5,000m, sixth in 3,000m at NCAA nationals.OUTDOOR - Out for season with hypothyroidism.CROSS COUNTRY - Becomes 10th Oregon male to win individual conference title, sixth at NCAA nationals.

2007INDOOR - Third in 5,000m, fourth in 3,000m at NCAA nationals.OUTDOOR - Second at 10,000m at NCAA nationals.AUGUST - Makes global senior debut at IAAF World Championships.CROSS COUNTRY - Second at NCAA nationals. Leads Oregon to team title.

2010APRIL - Breaks American record in 10,000m at Payton Jordan Invitational but loses to Chris Solinsky, who runs 26:59.60.JUNE - Defends title at USATF nationals in the 10,000m.

2011JANUARY - Finishes second to Mo Farah at Great Edinburgh Cross Country.MARCH - Debuts in the half marathon in New York, finishing third in 1:00:30.JUNE - Defends national title in the 10,000m, finishes third for 5,000m the next day.JULY - Improves 5,000m PR to 13:06.86 on the Diamond League circuit.AUGUST - Finishes seventh at IAAF World Championships 10,000m in 27:26.84.SEPTEMBER - Finishes third at Memorial Van Damme, setting 10,000m American record of 26:48.00.

2012FEBRUARY - Sets American record for indoor 2-mile at USATF Classic in 8:09.72.